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In one word, this is a responsible book; the rest is commentary. Around 1992 a few of us were led by Charles Bennett into a Garden of Eden of quantum information, communication, and computation. No sooner had we started exploring our surroundings and naming the birds and the beasts, than Peter Shor put an end to that apparent innocence by showing that factoring could be turned-by means of quantum hardware-into a po- nomial task. Fast factoring meant business; everybody seemed to be awfully interested in factoring. Not that anyone had any use for factoring per se, but it seemed that all the world's secrets were protected by factor-keyed padlocks. Think of all the power and the glory (and something else) that you might get by acting as a consultant to big businesses and government agencies, helping them pick everyone else's locks and at the same time build unpickable ones (well, nearly unpickable) for themselves. And if one can get an exponential advantage in factoring, wouldn't an exponential advantage be lying around the corner for practically any other computational task? Quantum infor- tion "and all that" has indeed blossomed in a few years into a wonderful new chapter of physics, comparable in ?avor and scope to thermodynamics. It has alsoturnedintoaveritable"industry"-producingpapers,conferences,exp- iments, e?ects, devices-even proposals for quantum computer architectures.
List of contents
Qubits.- Measurements and quantum operations.- Quantum nonlocality and interferometry.- Classical information and communication.- Quantum information.- Quantum entanglement.- Entangled multipartite systems.- Quantum state and process estimation.- Quantum communication.- Quantum decoherence and its mitigation.- Quantum broadcasting, copying, and deleting.- Quantum key distribution.- Classical and quantum computing.- Quantum algorithms.
Summary
No sooner had we started exploring our surroundings and naming the birds and the beasts, than Peter Shor put an end to that apparent innocence by showing that factoring could be turned—by means of quantum hardware—into a po- nomial task.
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From the reviews:
"This is a comprehensive overview of quantum information, including computation, communication and cryptography. ... The bibliography is extremely comprehensive. The book can be recommended as a useful resource for researchers in any area of quantum information, including those who are familiar with one topic and wish to enter another." (Simon J. Gay, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2009 c)
"As the title states, this book provides a concise overview over quantum information theory ... . This is ... a nice book which can be recommended to researchers in other fields who wants to get a fast and sound overview over the subject. It is also suitable for students learning quantum information theory ... . For researchers working in quantum information theory it ... can serve as a compact reference book." (Michael Keyl, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1166, 2009)
